Keyspan USB Server review

Housed in a grey, plastic box with four USB ports on one side and an array of LEDs on top, you could be forgiven for thinking the Keyspan USB Server is just another USB hub.

It's not. Sure, you can connect multiple USB devices to it, but the key to the device is the Ethernet port that sits alongside the power socket on the side of the box. This allows you to connect the USB Server to a network and access the devices connected to it from any Mac on that network.

This means you can turn any USB printer into a network printer without needing to connect it to a Mac and turn on USB Printer Sharing. A USB scanner immediately becomes a workgroup scanner that can be accessed by any Mac on the network. And a multi-function device can be used to send faxes from any user who has a computer connected to the network.

There are a couple of caveats: everyone who wants to use the USB Server and the devices connected to it must have the drivers for both the Server and each device, and only one user can be connected to any device at a time. The latter of these is more restricting than it first appears because users must manually connect to and disconnect from the USB Server, and if a user forgets to disconnect, no one else can use that device.

Those minor quibbles aside, the Keyspan USB Server worked very well in our tests. We tried connecting to a Canon i990 inkjet printer, Dymo label printer, USB memory card reader, and a scanner, and all of them worked as if they were connected directly to the Mac.

The Keyspan USB Server will be of great use to anyone who has to swap USB printers or scanners between Macs. Home users will also appreciate its virtues: by connecting an Ethernet wirless bridge to the USB Server, you can connect an iBook or PowerBook wirelessly to any USB device, thereby allowing you to print from an AirPort-enabled laptop without the need to have a host Mac powered up and running USB Printer Sharing. Its minor shortcomings are small beer compared with the convenience it offers, and we thoroughly recommend it.